THE
FATHER OF CHRISTIAN REBELLION

Martin Luther (1483-1546) lived in Germany at a time when
nationalism was cresting, and its tide would pick him up and sweep him along
like a piece of flotsam. Like many in his day he was schooled in the new philosophical
method of independent thinking. Luther’s zeal for philosophy is reminiscent of
Augustine’s infatuation with philosophy, and Luther’s fellows at the University
of Erfurt often referred to him with Aristotle’s honorary nickname, “The
Philosopher”, which shows how much Christianity had been leavened in a thousand
years: Liberal philosophy-loving Bible scholars like Philo, Justin, and Origen
had been despised as heretics in the early centuries of Christianity. But when
the Catholic Church built schools all over Europe, liberal scholars like Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, and Peter Abelard began
quoting to their students the works of those long-dead heretics as if they were
authorities whose Enlightened teachings could be used
as doctrinal precedents! This resulted in those old liberals, who’d been
despised and executed by early Christians, being increasingly viewed as
respectable “church fathers” and trustworthy doctrinal experts by modern
Christians! This illustrates the gradual and subtle beginnings of religious
traditions and corrupt doctrines.

Luther had no desire to lead a religious
life, but one day in a frightening thunderstorm he impulsively made a vow to a
dead woman: “Help me, Saint Anne, and I’ll become a monk!” Two weeks later in
preparation for entering the Spartan life of a monastery he sold many of his
possessions including most of his books. Among the few books he kept were his
treasured pagan classics. But remember, even though I’ll continue calling it pagan
philosophy, it was now Christian philosophy. So Luther was keeping his Christian
philosophy books because they would help him as a monk. And, predictably enough
since he was a zealous espouser of Reason, he chose to enter the Augustinian
Order. After a year as a lowly plebe he was promoted to monk, and a year later
was ordained a priest and said his first mass in May of 1507. A year later he
was selected for advanced studies and went to the University of Wittenberg,
which had only been founded six years earlier. There he was taught by
professors who were, like many Germans, fans of the Enlightened English
champion of German independence from the pope, William of Ockham, who lived and
died in Germany.

Martin Luther, too, became a fan of the
excommunicated escaped convict who lived in Germany on the lam. In fact, the
two people who would have the most influence on Luther’s life were Ockham and
Augustine, which contributed to Luther’s also opposing the pope, being
excommunicated, and living on the lam in Germany under the protection of German
nobility. Because both Augustine and Ockham publicly denounced the pagan
philosophers, Luther demonstrated his loyalty by also denouncing them. But
because Luther’s hero, Augustine, used philosophy, and because Saint Aquinas
had made philosophy part of Christianity, Luther, like most Christians today,
may never have realized he was Hellenized. He was in way over his head and was
swept along with the flood of rebellion.

All of the Protestant reformers were Enlightened, even if, like Luther and Augustine, they denied
it. John Calvin, for example, was a dedicated humanist with a strong Roman
Catholic background in philosophy. Ulrich Zwingli, also a reformed Catholic
priest, was a noted humanist who wanted the Protestant Church founded on
democratic principles. Zwingli even paid tribute to the pagan philosophers (and
may even have accepted Dante’s idea that they were too “good” to go to hell) by
saying he’d prefer “the eternal lot of a Socrates [the suicidal homosexual
philosopher] or a Seneca [a suicidal Roman philosopher] than of a pope.” The
Protestant reformers hated Romanism, not philosophic Reason.

When Luther graduated from Wittenberg he
was asked by his professors to fill a teaching vacancy. Young Professor Luther
proved to be more aggressive than his fellow professors, and he became an
outspoken advocate of Thomas Aquinas’ “biblical humanism”, something many were
still hesitant to publicly embrace. He also wanted to implement Ockham’s idea
of eliminating the direct influence of pagan philosophy on Christianity! (Like
I said, he was in over his head.) He adopted Ockham’s “sola Scriptura” slogan,
not realizing his own heavy reliance on Augustine and
Aquinas made the slogan empty. Like many Christians before and since, Luther relied
on the traditions of other Christians, naïvely trusting that the works of those
men were probably based on sola Scriptura. It was a big mistake and would
result in many generations of Christians being led astray.

Luther’s idea of “biblical humanism” was
to study the Bible while also accepting as dogmatic and binding the teachings
of the “old Fathers” (Luther’s term for the Church Fathers), especially St.
Augustine. In reference to his program of biblical humanism Luther wrote, “our theology and that of St. Augustine reign.” As you can
see, “sola Scriptura” was a great slogan but, alas, it was only a slogan.

Father Luther made a trip to visit the
papal see at Rome, and the result was very similar to Father Ockham’s trip to
the papal see at Avignon – he was disgusted. He returned to Wittenberg and in
1517 nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the bulletin-board door of his
church to publicly express his doctrinal differences. If he had
published it in Latin or Greek so only the educated elite could read it, or
done anything but let the ignorant masses know about it, there would have been
no trouble. But he went public. And that was the moment Luther unknowingly lost
control of his life.

Father Erasmus (1469-1536) was an
Enlightened Dutch Roman Catholic priest in Luther’s Augustinian Order who
agreed with Luther and supported his arguments for reforming Roman Catholicism.
Erasmus was an intellectual humanist who hated the corruption in the Church and
quietly and gently espoused the use of the new Rationalism to restore moral and
doctrinal purity to the Church. He said post-Aquinas Christianity had improved,
becoming “a religion of the spirit based on confidence in human Reason.”
But, like many humble intellectuals who also have high character, he naïvely
assumed most men were also of good character, because God created us all in His
image by putting Equal amounts of Natural goodness in each of us so we all
might tune in to His Natural Law. Erasmus therefore believed the Roman Catholic
Church and its doctrines would eventually be reformed from within. And he
thought priests like Luther could be catalysts for this internal reformation.

In order to reach the intellectuals with
his arguments Luther also published a manuscript in Latin. The scholars of
Europe, including the pope, read it and discussed it with others. At this point
there was no real problem. Yes, Luther had publicly posted his Ninety-five
Theses, and, yes, that was a no-no because you were not supposed to expose
the populace to concepts it couldn’t handle because a dim-wit – whether he be a
nobleman or a commoner – armed with a concept he doesn’t understand can be a
dangerous thing. But there was no real problem here, so all the pope did was
benevolently and fatherly instruct Father Luther’s superior to lightly
reprimand this feisty young pup for his indiscretion. As far as the Vatican was
concerned that ended this very minor incident. And in all probability Luther
would have beat on his chest a little bit and groused about it and written one
or two more papers in Latin and then settled down and lived a normal life. But
he had publicly opposed the Vatican with his Ninety-five Theses.
And that had attracted the attention of dim-witted nationalists.

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German Catholics were beginning to feel
different from their Italian Catholic masters as the appeal of religious and
nationalistic independence grew. Behind the scenes there were German nobles
who, for their own political reasons, decided they could use a bold,
charismatic, and naïvely-idealistic man like Martin Luther who had delighted
locals with the brazen challenge of his Ninety-five Theses. These
nationalistic nobles pursued Luther with flattery, and they encouraged the
masses to view him as a champion of righteousness. Even the relatively mild
professors at Wittenberg actively rallied behind Luther, and he found himself
to be somewhat of a celebrity. His celebrity and his natural tendency to use
bluster in an attempt to save face when reprimanded caused a couple of meetings
with Church officials to go badly. All the officials wanted to do was lightly
reprimand him, but when Luther reacted with cocky defiance the officials were
indignant at the flagrant disrespect and insubordination with which he treated
people who were just trying to do their jobs by quieting down a situation that
was rapidly becoming a public spectacle. The issue for the Church now became
Luther’s defiant and sinful treatment of the very Church authorities to whom
he’d made vows of submission and obedience before God (Ec
5:4,5).

Seeing that things weren’t going well for
him in the Church, and since his Latin manuscript was being met with silence,
Luther, empowered by the nobles and by the masses, went on the offensive by
making his feud very public. He published numerous tracts in German
in order to rally the masses. And Luther was no dummy; he knew the masses of pewsters didn’t care about doctrine so he appealed to their
nationalism and their greed. He wrote that the Italian hierarchy in Rome
was selling indulgences, relics, etc., and thereby lining Italian
pockets with German money. His “them vs. us” theme nicely fit the
nationalistic mood. Because they were incapable of dealing with words and
concepts and doctrine, the masses failed to notice when Luther’s tracts, which
were passed out by the thousands, referred to the economic issues by
saying, “We here come to the heart of the matter”, that he was
contradicting the doctrinal emphasis of his Ninety-five Theses.
Another of Luther’s tracts, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German
Nation, was wandering and poorly written but it did pit “the German people”
against “Rome”, and it did use the same philosophy Ockham used in defense of
Emperor Louis IV to justify “the secular arm” of the Church rising against “the
spiritual arm” whenever the secular arm thought it appropriate. It was very
well received. Another of his writings even called upon the ecclesiastical
“spiritual arm” to start a revolution in the Church, which shocked, offended,
and alienated many clerics like Erasmus who had previously supported Luther but
now properly viewed him as a rabble-rousing advocate of rebellion against
authority just like Lucifer. For its part the Vatican, now that Luther had
publicly defied and attacked the authority of his superiors, had no alternative
but to respond in the same way God did when His subordinate, Lucifer, rose in
rebellion against His authority – it excommunicated him.

Luther
was summoned before Church officials at the 1521 Imperial Diet, which was
convened by the young new emperor, Charles V, at Worms. Luther was escorted and
protected by a large cavalcade of German knights all the way to Worms. It was a
huge spectacle with throngs of people cheering Luther. Luther and the church
officials argued in Latin, therefore the massed spectators couldn’t understand
a word. But that turned out to be to Luther’s advantage: The language barrier
kept the masses from understanding how badly the proceedings went for the
thirty-six year old rogue priest who had no way to counter the Church
officials’ Scriptural and legal arguments against both his blatant disrespect
for authority and his public attempts to foment rebellion. As a practical
matter, however, the arguments were a charade; neither the nationalistic nobles
nor the masses were there to listen with keen discernment to discussions about
Biblical and legal concepts and doctrines like authority and rebellion – they
were there to take a stand against their church no matter what happened to
Luther.

As the proceedings drew to a close Luther
was extremely frustrated: His gut told him the “just cause” theory of the Greek
philosophers justified his rebellion. And yet these smug clerics had just used
the Bible and Church and civil law – none of which he thought applied in his
case – to humiliate him like a little schoolboy. His undisciplined hot temper
and his frustration caused Luther to lose control of himself:
He began hysterically screaming at the officials at the top of his lungs with
red-faced apoplectic anger. And he did something interesting; he switched to
German so the people would understand. One of his supporters also began
yelling, and order ended. An early Protestant historian, in an effort to make a
hero out of a screaming hysterical loser, and to use
literary whitewash to create a dramatic and principled beginning to the
Protestant Rebellion, portrayed Luther as proudly declaring with calm,
disciplined resolve: “Here I stand. I can do no other.” It is now known to be a
fabrication – Luther said no such thing.

Appalled and probably somewhat frightened
by the erupting pandemonium, the young emperor quickly terminated the
proceedings, at which point Luther turned and strode toward the cheering
throngs with his arms raised in defiant triumph. Luther was neither a hero nor
a lone warrior taking a stand on sola Scriptura. He was largely a puppet of the
nationalistic nobles who had not escorted him to Worms only to have him
apologize and ask for forgiveness. Luther knew if he did that the very knights
who escorted him would have killed him. In fact, had the emperor not terminated
the proceedings when he did the bloodshed might have started then instead of
later. Yes, it had already been decided that blood was going to flow.

Luther
was now an outlaw. He fled into the protective arms of the nationalist groups and
went into a life of hiding. He lied about his name and told people he was
“Junker Georg”, grew a beard to change his looks, illegally wore the attire of
a knight, and grew very fat. He was shocked and horrified by how quickly the
population became violent revolutionists, and he made
a few hypocritical efforts to tell people rebellion is a sin – just as Erasmus
had been telling him all along. As a result, many of his followers, called Martinians, denounced and ridiculed him and joined other
groups or started their own. Luther’s cries for peace were ignored and the
bloodshed began. Under the leadership of several other Catholic priests who
started their own Protestant denominations, the Protestant Reformation forged
ahead without him.